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KSU president keeping eye on prize: Top 50 by 2025

Schulz defends avoidance of "K-State" nickname in national circles

Kirk Schulz is president of Kansas State University.

Kansas State University President Kirk Schulz juggles the reality of flat state funding to higher education, signs students are racking up huge college debt and missed opportunities created by upper-tier athletic programs.

All the while, the third-year president plows ahead with a daunting goal of lifting Kansas State into ranks of the top 50 public research universities by 2025. That will require the university to eclipse as many as 40 competitors nationwide.

Schulz said Kansas State would begin rising to a peer of Iowa State University, North Carolina State University or Colorado State University by making certain over the next year that faculty and staff members were working from the same playbook.

"I argue that Kansas State has never had a really effective plan for what they want to do in the future," Schulz said in an interview at The Topeka Capital-Journal on Tuesday. "We've kind of grown organically. If we saw an opportunity, we responded to it. But there wasn't a set of clear objectives that you said, 'OK, here is what we want all employees working towards.' "

His strategy — escalate private giving to the land-grant university in Manhattan, lean on increases in student tuition and fees as long as enrollment continued to climb, and advance the country's understanding of the quality of education and research offered at Kansas State.

Schulz had an unexpected hiccup while outlining one element of the reform plan during a recent speech in Manhattan.

During remarks to Gov. Sam Brownback's council of economic advisers, he spoke about the idea of making certain official materials distributed outside the region no longer used the shorthand name K-State.

The change, chronicled in a newspaper story, was designed to prevent outsiders from confusing activities at Kansas State University with events at other "KS" schools, such as Kennesaw State University in Kennesaw, Ga., Kentucky State University in Frankfort, Ky., and Kent State University in Kent, Ohio.

Some Kansas State alumni let Schulz know any movement to diminish the K-State nickname would be viewed with displeasure.

"The angry emails started coming in about how I didn't understand the institution," Schulz said.

He said the university's policy is to use K-State and Kansas State University interchangeably in accordance with the setting.

"As we are out trying to brand ourselves nationally, it's important you sort of use both where it makes some sense," he said. "When our faculty and students do something significant, and we publicize it, I want people to realize what university they're actually coming from. That's why you will see Kansas State University, deliberately, in a lot of that."

Schulz said prospects of the Kansas State Wildcats playing in a football bowl game close to New Year's Day should be recognized as a chance to introduce the university to a broader audience. Perhaps through the purchase of television advertising in the game, he said, more folks can develop an appreciation for what Kansas State offered.

"We need to make sure we utilize this opportunity to the fullest," the president said of the university's athletic prominence. "I would argue we have not utilized it the way we ought to."

He said U.S. higher education institutions had to adjust to diminished resources from state taxpayers for basic operations. Responding to increases in utilities costs, health insurance premiums and other necessities mean administrators have to turn to a reliable source of cash.

"That means you will shift your funding models more to tuition and fees," Schulz said. "This is happening across the country."

He said enrollment at Kansas State increased this fall to a record 24,300 despite five years of tuition and fee hikes.

He appreciated that more families were struggling to send children to college and more students were graduating with hefty loan portfolios.

There is a tipping point in terms of student tolerance of rate hikes, he said, but that red line is an unknown commodity.

"At 5 percent or 6 percent every year," Schulz said, "there will be a point if we're not careful where all of the sudden enrollment starts to plummet because people just can't afford to pay the tuition and fees. We've got to be careful with that."